My 2025 in Review
At the start of the 2025, I wasn’t sure what my relationship to music, my music career, and being an artist was. I was still tinkering with song ideas everyday, but I didn’t have direction, focus, clarity, or even enthusiasm guiding me during this time. It’s just kind of all I knew to do with my free time, so I did what I knew. As you may know, I’ve been working on the Home, Grown album for years, endlessly iterating, but with no real end in sight. But at some point, I felt like the demo for “Some Days” from The Sound of Healing needed to be fully realized. I thought of my friend Alvin. I had primarily worked with him, and known him, as a guitarist and accompanist, but had started seeing him share songs he was producing through the last year, and loved what I was hearing. So, I reached out to him to see if he would want to produce it as a one-off, he said yes, and that was the first domino to fall that set my 2025 in motion. I also released the Room to Grow EP with the homie Newselph from Alberta, making a 3-piece boom-bap care package of carefully crafted beats and bars. It felt like that perfect way to kick off the year, despite not being able to see how my music and artist career would go through 2025.
Alvin and I had a couple of great sessions to start off 2025, but about a month into the year, I got into a car accident that sidelined me for weeks, then midway through that, I got hit with a nasty flu that felt like it went on far too long. It led to a lot of time alone, laying down and staying still, and not doing anything other than being with and taking care of myself. While I’d generally prefer to not have had to go through injury and sickness to get to where I am today, I am now thankful for that experience and how it led me to my clarity. Dedicated time and space to feel and think through things I’d been avoiding or didn’t have answers to felt like spending time in the hyperbolic time chamber. I met my anxieties, fears, and challenging questions about life without judgment and was in conversations with myself throughout.
The Hyperbolic Time Chamber from Dragon Ball Z
I emerged from that time with new perspectives on life and myself, and maybe most importantly, on being an artist and my Home, Grown album. It was time to bring this album to life, it was time to recentre being an artist first and foremost among everything else I do. Once I was well, Alvin and I picked up “Some Days” again and I loved what he turned it into. He brought ideas to the production that I couldn’t, and invited the song to places it deserved to go. It felt like the first piece of the world that would eventually make up Home, Grown. We’ve been working consistently every week for the majority of this year and it’s been amazing to finally be recording and producing all of this, bringing it to life with many friends and collaborators joining the journey along the way. There’s lots more work to do, but we’re on our way.
Since this grounded clarity that I wanted and needed to focus on being an artist again, gratefully, there’s been abundance as a result of my efforts and putting myself out there again. Plus, I’ve received numerous affirmations that I’m on a good path. I was selected to feature on a Calgary Radio Show Dirty Needles on CJSF’s 25th Anniversary Compilation. I was the winner of Unsigned BC’s 2025 BC Song of the Summer with “I Can’t Wait”. I played a few opening and showcase sets around town. I was chosen to be Artist-in-Residence at Collingwood Neighborhood House. I released another 3-song EP called Heartwork, this time with TLO, someone I’ve been a fan of for many years now. I hosted a couple of listening sessions for the album works-in-progress and 50 people showed up. I threw my concert in years called the CLARITY Showcase and 80+ people showed up, which honestly surprised me in the best way. I didn’t realize that that support still existed for my music. And maybe the biggest one to close out the year is that I was selected as one of the openers for Shad’s Vancouver Show at Hollywood Theatre in January, which means more to me than there really is space or even words for.
I’m in a much different part of my life, music, and career compared to when I started this year, and I’m grateful for the chance to keep going and for everyone who has supported me in any way.
Ingat. See you in 2026!
